Disease in Theory and Practice

Abstract

At the heart of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)-government debate was a conflict over the science of HIV. Concerned by the Mbeki government’s reluctance to accept mainstream HIV science, the TAC directed its advocacy efforts towards educating affected communities about the science of HIV and anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment. Far from being confined to the era of Mbeki’s presidency, these efforts are ongoing and underpin TAC’s HIV treatment literacy programme in South Africa. An example of TAC’s efforts in this regard can be found in a recent (2012) issue of their Equal Treatment magazine, which focuses on the science of HIV, presenting ‘easy guides to HIV testing, prevention and ARV treatment’ and a diagrammatic explanation of the ‘HIV life cycle’ (TAC authors, 2012, pp. 1, 16–17). This latter explanation of HIV science presents the starting point for this chapter. It offers a useful provocation to unearth some of the sedimented binary oppositions mobilised in the South African HIV debate (and in much contemporary work in the field of HIV). Refracting the science of HIV through the lens of feminist science studies, I argue that HIV, in its dynamic relations with individual (human) bodies reveals the tenuousness of traditional ontological distinctions between the human/non-human, subject/object and self/other.